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The INCONGRUITY of my Reflections
Painted Fingernails
By Laura Galland
Feb. 5, 1998
I awake at 0330 hrs., hungry but not so hungry as for a large meal, decide upon a bowl of cold cereal and find, no milk. Putting on a minimum of makeup - violet eye shadow, dark brown mascara, eye liner, powder, blusher, lipstick (one has to be sensible about this: after all, I'm only going to get a quart of milk!) - I hurry into my clothes: front clasp bra with my "K-Mart Specials" breastforms (thick freezer gel in plastic storage bags inserted into the bra "pockets"), dark blue long sleeve pullover, panties, long johns, thermal socks, my Sorel winter boots guarenteed to
-30F.
I'll need that warmth this morning: it's all of 6F with a bitter NW wind, even if I'm only driving rather than walking down to the little gas/convenience store: my little van doesn't idle correctly and seems to take forever to get both the engine and interior warmed to a comfortable level, so I'm forced to sit in it holding down the gas pedal. One can get icicles dangling from the nose while one waits for the defroster blower to do something besides move around frozen air.
I reach into the closet and extract one of my warm, dark blue knit stocking caps, and my new quilted silk-like shiny red winter jacket with its black fur collar, that is an Oriental cut that still seems to be so prevalent (but when it's more affordable but still looks good, what's the difference?). The jacket was made in China - what isn't these days? - and hopefully not in one of their dreadful slave labor camps.
As I slipped into it, the thought crossed my mind that neither my mother nor my two grandmothers ever had a jacket so nice or so warm and comfortable back when they were my age; and never you mind what age! Growing up in all three households at various times in my journey, I never saw them go outside on a cold winter day except in a heavy long wool coat; if what drew them outside was work, then it might be a heavy plaid wool jacket. Head covering always seem to be a scarf, and hands were covered with what seemed then and today to be thin gloves, and women then didn't weat thermal socks and snowmobile boots, only cotton socks with shoes and rubber boots.
Reaching down to draw the inner tie bands together - with their quaint gold plated metal ball ends - I'm struck by the sight of my red metalflake fingernails. Actually, Sally Hansen's Hard As Nails metalflake in some kind of strange grey violet shade, coated with one thin coat of Cover Girls Nailslicks [metallic] Claret. Odd, when I first started building scale model cars in the mid 1960's, shortly after my 23rd birthday, I was infatuated with all shades of reds, and metallic wasn't enough: everything had to be either metalflake or diamond flake! Well, not everything had to be some shade of red: I did build an IMC 1:25 [1964 LeMans] Ford GT-40 painted with a Cub Yellow underbase and top coated with Natural Pearl. There was also an AMT 1:25 1964 Lotus GP racer done in Peacock Diamond Flake, and run as a slot car until I catapulted it off of turn three through a plate glass window at the local slot car track (EXPENSIVE!).
But I digress and seem to have wandered.
But what struck me most about my "painted" fingernails, was that NONE of the women around me as I was growing up ever had "painted" fingernails. Never! Not even when they went out for an evening with their spouses. At the minimum, a clear coat and at the maximum, a kind of milky coat. To this day, my 84 yr. "young" mother still disdains any color than clear!
Apparently it was "sinful" for both of my grandmothers and my mother to have "painted" fingernails, and I do remember my mother's mother, who ran a 4-H club durintg World War 2, admonishing the girls in the club about the danger of looking like a "hussy."
Actually, I think it had more to do with self-esteem. None of them saw fancy makeup and fun dressing as a means to make oneself feel good, but rather as something a "girl from the wrong side of the tracks" would do. My mother may dress well, though sometimes her concept of color coordination can be skewed, but her makeup really does say it all: it's muted. Now I know that there are those who will say that neither my grandmothers nor my mother, as all women purportedly "believe," had a choice. And yes, I fully understand that society and its institutions propagate the notion or concept that women don't have a "choice" as men purportedly do.
But to further compound matters, if one doesn't believe one has a "choice," then one has little or no self-esteem. When my mother's cat lies on her back - which naturally leads to her hind legs being spread - my mother always remarks, "you have no shame." Even though cats are "animals," they have no room for "shame" in their lives. If they aren't assertive - and we don't need philosophical arguements here - they certainly won't have self-esteem, which in their world means they probably don't exist.
I do have self-esteem, though far too many of the red-neck types would argue otherwise: to them, only "freaks" live and dress out of gender. In order to survive on my new journey as a woman - whether or not it's considered to be "legal" sense of being - I must have self-esteem, and I must be assertive, otherwise I won't succeed.
As an added bonus, there is this "byte" too. So many of the GG's that want to "help" me with my makeup, could really use a professional makeover as much as I do, and probably with greater urgency!
TaTa
Laura
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